Finally finished my new book a stand-alone Sci-Fi novel about the singularity, AI and human progress to the stars. I thought I would share a few tips and gotchas to anyone who has thought about it. TLDR read the title!
Thanks for this post. I never knew exactly what's involved in creating and publishing an ebook, seeing it laid out made the endeavour seem a lot more approachable.
I am reading the sample of your book. The premise is interesting, I am curious how it develops. So I'll probably buy it when I get to the end of the sample.
It was amusing reading the post, under the post it said 6 total views! That kind of fits with your point about traffic. The only reason I found this post is because I submitted one myself, so HN redirected me to the New Submissions page. (A wise design choice!) Too bad Amazon doesn't seem to have anything like that.
Glad it was useful; I drop hints all the time to some of my more interesting friends that it is pretty easy and totally free to publish a book these days. I am sure everyone has a story in them somewhere.
It's so good to meet another "hobby-author" (as I label myself). I've been self-publishing for over a decade now and the tips/gotchas you mention resonate as strongly today as they did when I started out on this unconventional path.
My goto publishing platforms have been, since the early days, lulu.com for print-on-demand and Smashwords for ePub.
I chose lulu because there weren't many (reasonably) simple online publishing services in the days before Kindle Direct Publishing. I considered moving to KDP after it launched but, sadly, I developed an intense dislike for the whole Amazon book publishing/selling ecosystem - I still happily buy books on Amazon, but as I give all my published work away for free Amazon is not a place where I feel the need to list my work for download. And for the last few things I've published, I've not even bothered with Lulu: ePub is enough to satisfy my needs.
I chose Smashwords for similar reasons - there just wasn't many other options around when I started, and the core services Smashwords delivers (ePub generation from docx files, and distribution to Apple's bookstore) still meet my requirements. The one big gap in Smashwords's distribution network (ignoring Amazon) is the Google Play store; it's an additional bit of work to manually upload the ePub/cover files to Google and copy over the book details/metadata to get it listed to my satisfaction.
The only cost of this publishing activity is my time. I spend £0 on marketing/promotional stuff; I will occasionally spam friends/family on Facebook with updates ... but that's the price they have to pay for being related/friends with me!
You mentioned the key advantage of self-publishing: the ease of updating the books whenever you want/need to update/correct the copy. No book, in my view, is ever "finished" - all of my books will always be works-in-progress, until I die (of course).
As for sales ... never underestimate the role that pure, blind luck plays in the process of popularising a book. My "bestseller" has been shifting 30-60 downloads a month for many years. Soon after I uploaded the book it got featured on the Apple Books front page via some algorithmic mystery, stirred enough interest through a clickbaity title to get into the top 50 poetry books list ... and has never looked back since! I like to think the book's success is down to the astonishing quality of the poems. Critics are free to disagree!
Have you found any kind of critique / review system out there that might cover such e-book self-published works?
I mean, you provided some keywords and a blurb and that's good - but some searchable, kinda scorable and followable system or reviewers (independent from amazon) would help people find stuff in this sea of e-books. I guess there was some hope for goodreads at some point but that doesn't seem to be it. What's your favorite? Perhaps sci-fi specific?
I wish there was one, like most readers I was in the 70% kindle only club up until a year ago getting recommended the same military sci-fi all the time. I now try to read the comments of some of the better reviewers and see what other books they have reviewed, and it does work to a certain extent (or at least until we differ!).
As to my favorite Sci-Fi author, I have a few but I guess Ian M Banks as those were the ones I started Sci-fi on. I almost wanted this to be a prequel to his culture series; however, I am not in his league IMHO and such a book would be far more violent than this, I also wanted to keep it upbeat for my target audience. My next book does not have these restrictions though.
Forgot to add I reset the view counter before I posted it here as I was kind of interested in how many people from HN would visit.
8 comments
[ 382 ms ] story [ 150 ms ] threadI am reading the sample of your book. The premise is interesting, I am curious how it develops. So I'll probably buy it when I get to the end of the sample.
It was amusing reading the post, under the post it said 6 total views! That kind of fits with your point about traffic. The only reason I found this post is because I submitted one myself, so HN redirected me to the New Submissions page. (A wise design choice!) Too bad Amazon doesn't seem to have anything like that.
My goto publishing platforms have been, since the early days, lulu.com for print-on-demand and Smashwords for ePub.
I chose lulu because there weren't many (reasonably) simple online publishing services in the days before Kindle Direct Publishing. I considered moving to KDP after it launched but, sadly, I developed an intense dislike for the whole Amazon book publishing/selling ecosystem - I still happily buy books on Amazon, but as I give all my published work away for free Amazon is not a place where I feel the need to list my work for download. And for the last few things I've published, I've not even bothered with Lulu: ePub is enough to satisfy my needs.
I chose Smashwords for similar reasons - there just wasn't many other options around when I started, and the core services Smashwords delivers (ePub generation from docx files, and distribution to Apple's bookstore) still meet my requirements. The one big gap in Smashwords's distribution network (ignoring Amazon) is the Google Play store; it's an additional bit of work to manually upload the ePub/cover files to Google and copy over the book details/metadata to get it listed to my satisfaction.
The only cost of this publishing activity is my time. I spend £0 on marketing/promotional stuff; I will occasionally spam friends/family on Facebook with updates ... but that's the price they have to pay for being related/friends with me!
You mentioned the key advantage of self-publishing: the ease of updating the books whenever you want/need to update/correct the copy. No book, in my view, is ever "finished" - all of my books will always be works-in-progress, until I die (of course).
As for sales ... never underestimate the role that pure, blind luck plays in the process of popularising a book. My "bestseller" has been shifting 30-60 downloads a month for many years. Soon after I uploaded the book it got featured on the Apple Books front page via some algorithmic mystery, stirred enough interest through a clickbaity title to get into the top 50 poetry books list ... and has never looked back since! I like to think the book's success is down to the astonishing quality of the poems. Critics are free to disagree!
Best wishes with your endeavours!
I mean, you provided some keywords and a blurb and that's good - but some searchable, kinda scorable and followable system or reviewers (independent from amazon) would help people find stuff in this sea of e-books. I guess there was some hope for goodreads at some point but that doesn't seem to be it. What's your favorite? Perhaps sci-fi specific?
(28 views now! Exciting :-)
As to my favorite Sci-Fi author, I have a few but I guess Ian M Banks as those were the ones I started Sci-fi on. I almost wanted this to be a prequel to his culture series; however, I am not in his league IMHO and such a book would be far more violent than this, I also wanted to keep it upbeat for my target audience. My next book does not have these restrictions though.
Forgot to add I reset the view counter before I posted it here as I was kind of interested in how many people from HN would visit.